Cultural appropriation seems to be one of the latest bugaboos of
the Left these days where it has suddenly become offensive for white
girls to wear hoop earrings and other things you would never have
imagined just a few years ago.

The idea—that people—especially those on the
Left—are seeking to make collective propriety claims on culture
among other things is nothing new under the sun. In the 1990s there
was great outcry over the plunder of generic resources from Third
World countries by explorers and entrepreneurs from First World
countries. I remember Brazil had an especially heavy chip on its
shoulder in regard to the issue and that resulted in heavy
restrictions on the export of flora and fauna and other biomaterial.
Such a shame too considering that we’ve only scratched the
surface on the many potential tropical foliage plants—not to
mention medicines sourced from the jungles there.

And it sure is funny how people who are supposably all about
common ownership of everything are now all about property rights. Are
you willing to bet that Karl Marx and Che Guevara tee shirts are not
registered trademarks?

When I took on the husbandry of the Japanese Pond
Turtle—Mauremeys japonica four years ago I never
imagined one of the unintended consequences would be my heightened
knowledge of many things Japanese. I now know at least one Kanji
symbol—the one for month and moon that I picked up on in the
Hayasui You Tube videos lots of other interesting factoids on the
society stumbled across when reading articles in the Japan
Times.

I also expanded my taste for Asian flora to incorporate into the
outdoor setups and enrich the surrounding landscape when I began the
reboot though I must confess I was never a total native plant zealot
because I always did have a thing for Hostas and Day Lilies and a few
other plants from that part of the world. Mainly because they look so
nice in a naturalistic landscape with rocks and water. And there is
water gardening itself which was also an Asian practice introduced
relatively recently to western societies—most likely from Japan
by way of the English who are a nation of master gardeners always
looking to try something exotic and new. And from there to the US in
the early 20th Century.

And there is the fine art of Bonsai that became popular in the
West in the mid 20th Century. The interest in dwarfing trees in pots
and training them into gnarled picturesque shapes that goes back to
ancient China and was like many cultural practices and even plant
species and cultivars—was introduced to Japan and then to the
West. It came to the US along with the interest in martial arts and
hibachi grills after World War II.

I first heard of bonsai in my childhood days circa fourth grade
when I got my first catalog from Arthur Eames Algrove—an
eccentric nursery man from Massachusetts who was one of the pioneers
in the introduction of bonsai trees to the USA. The
catalog—called the Twenty First Register came with an
assortment of Venus Flytraps and pitcher plants that came from
redeeming a coupon in a terrarium kit that was a Christmas gift from
Grandma. The plants did not last long because a terrarium in a poorly
lighted living room is not an optimal environment for carnivorous
plants that would rather be in a bright sunny bog—and my
horticultural ignorance of a novice plant enthusiast. Yet I was
intrigued by many of the native plants in the catalog and would
actually order a few in the years to come. The Sheep Laurel growing
in the bog garden by my main pond descended from material ordered
from Algrove in the early 1980s. He passed away not long after that
but the memory lives on. And the seed of interest in bonsai that was
planted. I experimented off and on through the years. Had a dwarf
Suwannee Elm from a nursery in Florida in a nice little bonsai pot
that lived for a while in the greenhouse and summered outdoors. After
it died I replaced it with a Shimpaku Juniper which is the Japanese
version of a Chinese Juniper.

Funny thing—many Japanese plants that bear the Latinized
botanical epithet ’japonica’ are actually of Chinese
origin—having arrived and naturalized in the island nation via
human migration and trade with mainland Asia—which is the
source also for the Kanji syllabary and the Yamoto culture that
became the modern Japanese. It’s a lot like the relationship
between England and continental Europe. The English probably got
their love of gardening from the French who are pretty decent
plantsmen and later in the age of colonial expansion acquired a taste
for the exotic flora being discovered on other continents. And they
really took a liking to what Japan had to offer. Likewise for
Japan—which developed a fascination for cacti and air plants
from Mexico—and exotic flora and fauna from elsewhere. I have a
pretty good book on Tillandsia published by Attagawa Tropical and
Alligator Garden. The text is in Japanese but it has awesome color
photos and English subtitles of the Latin names and the names of
locations in Mexico where wild plants were photographed.

As for my own pursuit of Bonsai—it goes on. I got the
Shimpaku Juniper circa 2011—a little before I got more into
Asian plants and got a Muhgo Pine (which is of European origin) a
little thereafter. Then tried to train a badly damaged Yew that was
on clearance from Rural King that looked promising but made several
mistakes and gave up on it this spring. Then had a bad experience
with a ready made Juniperus procumbens bonsai from Walmart which died
along with one of the same I gave to my brother as a gift.

A couple years ago I got a Glyptostrobus pensilis from
Woodlanders—this one comes from Vietnam and China and is a
relative of the North American Bald Cypress and the Asian Dawn
Redwood which are also common bonsai subjects so I thought it worth a
try. For all I know; it might be the first of its kind to be used as
such in history.

Got another Yew—a funny looking round leafed mutant called
Amersfoort that comes from Holland and looks more like a mini
Podacarpus tree. And this spring I really hit the jackpot with more
pre bonsai at a local nursery. A coveted Hokkaido Elm with really
nice form and a trio of a miniature type of Arborvitae to start a
bonsai forest in the large planter where I tried to establish the
bedraggled Yew from Rural King.

I also got another Juniper from Walmart and this time I corrected
what I believe to be the cause of death for the others from that
source. The soil—which looked like it was primarily composed of
coir peat—that’s peat derived from ground up coconut husk
which is supposed to be the ecologically friendly alternative to
sphagnum moss peat mined from bogs. But unfortunately it is the worst
thing for bonsai because it drains poorly and gets soggy when wet and
when it dries out it becomes difficult to rehydrate and the later
issue I think was the cause of demise for two junipers that just
dried out and fell apart because the water was just beading off or
running through the growing medium.

I unpotted that one and replaced the coir with a commercial bonsai
soil mix along with all the other recent acquisitions. Expensive
stuff at nine bucks for a little bag but I was very busy and
didn’t have time to make my own. Eventually I will. The
ingredients are familiar—fine ground up pine bark, humus and
grit.

Just a few weeks ago I ordered a Podacarpus tree on Amazon and it
was delivered to my door—a full sized pre trained bonsai in a
really nice bonsai pot. And I was very pleased with it to say the
least. Now I have a really nice collection sitting on my patio and
I’m on a roll. What I need now are some more deciduous trees to
balance it out as what I have—with exception of the Elm
tree—are all conifers. No bonsai collection is complete without
a Japanese Maple and Ginkgo trees are also common subjects. Asian
Sweet Gums are sometimes used and the North American type ought to
work as well.

As for the issue of cultural appropriation; I’ve been doing
my share of it lately. Personally I think the people who complain
about it are full of bunk because it’s not really appropriation
of anyone’s culture but rather the natural osmotic process in
which cultures evolve by transmitting ideas and practices around
which enriches all our lives. The cultural appropriation woo woos
probably have no idea what real culture is anymore than a desk jockey
from the Fish and Boat Commission or the DNRs in other states would
know a snapping turtle if it came along and bit off their big toe.

Culture I believe is like open source software which is freely
exchanged and custom modified by people—as opposed to patented
inventions to which inventors rightfully claim as intellectual
property. The issue ought to be the same for naturally evolved plants
and animals and heirloom crops and livestock breeds that have been
passed around by people for millennia. Intellectual property rights
would apply to organisms created by selective breeding or GMOs that
have been patented.

Now some thorny issues have arisen regarding the transfer of genes
from genetically modified crops to other fields by cross pollination
in which farmers that accidentally acquire beneficial traits by
accident might be considered guilty of stealing from the company that
produced the GM variety much like a business duplicating licensed
software to run on other machines. But from a libertarian perspective
which I’ve never heard anyone articulate in regard to this
issue I’ve often wondered if the legal tables could be turned,
on grounds that contamination of non GMO crops by GMO could be
considered a form of trespass like the libertarian definition of any
form of pollution or public nuisance crossing beyond one’s
property line?

If you are trying to grow Certified Organic—that really is a
big freaking deal.

On the other hand I always thought the notion that the English
moving rubber trees from Malaysia to plantations in other countries
being regarded as an act of theft is fundamentally flawed. Or Brazil
trying to stop foreign bio prospectors from collecting and
identifying new plants from the rain forests. The major gripe was
that people from other countries were stealing all the credit for
discovering and classifying the native flora. But that was pretty
much the case for North America pre 19th Century. While we were
preoccupied taming a wild frontier—botanists from Europe were
busy studying and classifying our native flora and fauna. I’ve
also noticed that many Japanese plants—which I remind you again
are often Chinese in origin bear the botanical epithet "thunbergii"
after the Swedish botanist Thunberg who was a guest of the Tokugawa
Shogunate in 1776. I actually have one of them—Allium
thunbergii—a really near fall blooming onion that makes a
near rock garden plant. It grows not far from Jeffersonia
dubia—the Asian relative of the North American species
named after our beloved TJ!

Before Japan, Thunberg also made his mark in South Africa.

Many plants in Mexico are named after the German botanist Pringel.
Like the Litsea pringeli—aka Mexican Bay Laurel in my
greenhouse. And another German—Martens described a Mexican
spike moss which is of a group related to club mosses. It is a common
house plant—Selaginella martensii. A common fish in the
aquarium trade Paracheirodon axelrodi—the Cardinal Tetra
from the Amazon Basin is named for an American fish expert of
Russian/Jewish heritage, Dr Herbert Axelrod who I just learned was
the founder of Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine! He was more a
specialist but also dealt with aquatic plants and wrote a very
comprehensive book on the husbandry of fish and aquarium culture.
Naturalists in earlier times were even more often generalists when it
came to both botany and zoology.

Back in Colonial times it was the Europeans who botanized the
United States and Mexico and Asia and Africa—mainly because at
the time the people living in these counties were more preoccupied
with basic survival and not the classification of plants and animals
that were of little or no value to the common people. Of some maybe
to the elites—which is no doubt what kept the art of bonsai
alive through the centuries. Ieyasu Tokugawa was probably as
mystified by Thunberg as Mexican peasants were by the crazy gringos
who traveled from afar to collect useless plants and butterflies. And
it was the same in the USA up until the end of the 19th Century.
Americans were latecomers in the game. And we made up for it by
classifying the overlooked diversity of reptiles and amphibians and
freshwater fishes that had been lumped into broader generic
categories by earlier foreign naturalists. Living in country does
give you a native advantage over foreigners on a brief sojourn when
it comes to observation of the local flora and fauna. As developing
countries become more affluent—they are already discovering
stuff on their own. Lately I’ve enjoyed a few You Tube videos
from Mexico made by hobbyists working with native turtles like the
Guerrero and Areolata wood turtles which I’ve had in the past
and would absolutely love to have again someday before I die.
It’s all in Spanish but I can enjoy and fundamentally
understand the animals and what is going on just like the Hayasuii
videos about the husbandry and ecology of Mauremys japonica
that got me hooked on that species.

I’m guessing the reason people have issues about cultural
appropriation is very similar to why other control freaks have issues
about people keeping exotic pets. Mainly because it’s
contagious, crosses borders and defies their attempts to control. It
is argued that wildlife is common heritage and common
property—but how can a nation state claim proprietary ownership
of a species that freely ranges beyond their national boundaries? And
what exactly is a native species? What is wildlife vs domesticated
flora and fauna? And what right do states and their experts have to
say that current number of domesticated species is fixed in the
fashion of an official from the U.S. Patent preposterously declared a
century or so ago that everything useful had already been invented?

And how can you justify let alone control anything that is
naturally evolved and is still evolving—be it animals and
plants or human culture? In the long run I don’t think anyone
can.

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